So last night I boarded a plane in New Orleans heading back to Phoenix after the ALEC conference. The flight was delayed a bit by weather, and three of my former comrades from the Goldwater Institute were on the same flight. We had to change planes in Dallas to reach Phoenix, and knew that the connection would be tight.
As luck would have it, we arrived in Dallas a mere three gates away from the flight to Phoenix. The four of us arrived at the gate 10 minutes before the scheduled departure of the plane, only to learn that American Airlines had sold our seats out from under us. They had no other flight to put us on, nor did any other airline. Back in the day, an airline might use their advanced data base technology to hold a plane for a few minutes to get someone three gates down onto their flight, but American Airlines apparently prefers to simply sell your seat.
Instead of the flight home that we had purchased, we were given a night in a hotel and a flight out in the morning. In my case, this meant rescheduling a flight my wife and son had scheduled for Saturday morning at a nontrivial expense. A person at the hotel told us that they hear this sort of story on a routine basis and sometimes get 50 stranded passengers a night.
Now at this point, many of you may be asking yourself “Self, why in the world would he put up an image of Airplane 2: The Sequel when the far superior Airplane was available?” Ah, well, glad you asked. I chose Airplane 2: The Sequel because this is in fact the second time in the last three years that American Airlines left me stranded in Dallas. On October 1, 2009 they left me stranded in Dallas and were not going to be able to get me to my destination in time for me to make a debate a couple of hours outside Atlanta after I had received assurances that they would be holding flights.
American Airlines won’t receive a third chance to strand me, and I was foolish to give them a second. Feel free to keep this in mind the next time you book a flight.
I think we who emphasize competition between different school models need to quit relying so heavily on the word “market” to describe the mechanism we’re trying to create. I’m not saying we should never use the word, I just think we’ve invested too heavily in it. Let’s focus on competition between different school models. If we can get people that far, which I think is very doable – consider how business-savvy the cool kids are; they know that competition is good and healthy - then we can let people think and discover what kind of mechanism creates that kind of competition. The realization that this mechanism is really a “market” can come later, or even never. Call it a bannana split if you want!
It’s bad enough that the word “market” is misleading to the many people who have limited conceptions of what a “market” is. For many if not most people “market” conjures up images of widget factories and green-eyeshade negotiations in which dollars and cents matter most. And you simply cannot deal with that by telling people that isn’t what a market “really” is. In a society like ours with no general social agreement on what counts as knowledge and meaning, it simply isn’t possible any longer to correct people’s misuse of words by telling them that the word “really” means something else. Not to them it doesn’t! And who are you to tell them their meaning is “wrong” while yours is “right”?
But more importantly, I think shallow thinking about what counts as a “market” has infected too many people in the school choice movement itself. On Jay’s post I left a comment with a snippit from this 1988 article by Milton Friedman:
In some ways, referring to “the market” puts the discussion on the wrong basis. The market is not a cow to be milked; neither is it a sure-fire cure for all ills.
Well, here’s a passage from that article that I think the school choice movement would do well to ponder. Discussing the privatization of government-owned monopolies, with particular concern for the opening up of China’s economy, Milton writes:
One way to overcome the opposition to privatization, widely used in Britain is, as described by Robert Pool,
To identify potential opponents and cut them in on the deal, general by means of stock ownership. The specific applications of the principle are (1) employee stock ownership, and (2) popular capitalism…
A pitfall to be avoid in adopting such expedients is to sweeten the deal by converting a government monopoly into a private monopoly – which may be an improvement but falls far short of the desirable outcome. The U.S. Postal Service illustrates that pitfall as well as the fallacy that mimicking the form of private enterprise can achieve the substance. It was established as a supposedly independent government corporation that would not be subject to direct political influence and that would operate on market principles. That has hardly been the outcome, and understandably so. It remained a monopoly and did not develop a strong private interest in efficiency.
Isn’t that what we’re doing in the school choice movement now? Not a single existing school choice program – not one – is designed in a way that is attractive and supportive for educational entrepreneurs who want to create new school models? Re-read Jay’s post about creating new institutions that reinvent the school from the ground up. If you were one of the cool kids and wanted to start a school like that, would any of the existing school choice programs be attractive to you? Or are we just transitioning from a government monopoly system to a public/private oligopoly in which a small group of powerful school systems (government, Catholic, and a few others) divide the spoils and keep entrepreneurs outside in the cold?
In the American film classic Animal House there is a scene where students smoke marijuana with their English professor, played by Donald Sutherland, and speculate that it could be the case that the molecules in your fingernails each contain a microscopic universe.
You can’t prove that there aren’t microscopic universes in your fingernails, after all, so they might be in there!
Again there is no attempt to address any of the gaping holes in retention theory. These holes include the fact that Florida’s 4th grade reading scores had improved substantially before the retention policy went into effect, and that they have continued to rise even as retention has fallen off substantially, and that they have fallen off substantially because of a very large improvement in 3rd grade scores.
Welner attempts to tiptoe around this by noting that our EdNext article addressing these points were addressed to a previous Walter Haney paper on the subject rather than the NEPC stuff, which is a distinction without much of a difference. The Chatterji paper contains a carbon copy of the Haney analysis. Amazingly, Chatterji dinged Burke and I for not doing a literature review (not the norm in our tribe) and then cites neither the Education Next paper nor Haney’s analysis. At best, she employed a double standard and at worst, she owes Professor Haney an apology.
Welner’s broader project is to attempt to use the causation problem as a shield. We don’t know, after all, exactly what caused Florida’s remarkable learning gains. Florida’s reformers had to implement their reforms in the real world rather than in a petri dish or in an Intention to Treat Random Assignment study. Welner believes that this allows him the opportunity for strategic nihilism:
The truth might be: (a) there are not actual improvements (the current study is too weak to say whether or not there are), (b) there are improvements, and they’re caused by a combination of all these things, (c) there are improvements, and they’re caused by something none of us pointed to (perhaps the green shirts??), or (d) there are improvements, and they’re caused by some of the things we’re pointing to BUT some of the other things we’re pointing to are actually harming students (just not enough harm to overcome the benefits of the other things).
In other words, when it comes to understanding the FL package of reforms, we are flying blind.
Welner is flying blind all right, but it is by choice. Let’s take each of these little gems on one at a time:
A. The NAEP results show very substantial improvements, as do other indicators.
B. I have always held that the exact cause for the improvement is impossible to know, because Florida’s reformers enacted multiple reforms simultaneously. The logical response to this is not to do none of the Florida reforms, but to do all of them.
C. Florida lurked near the bottom on NAEP for many years, enacted reforms in 1999, and then enjoyed sustained gains over time. While it could be the case that some mysterious X-factor caused the improvement, I’ve yet to hear a plausible theory regarding this. Dan Lips and I addressed multiple possibilities in the Education Next article, including demographic change, spending, etc, and found no evidence to support them.
D. This could be the case, but I haven’t seen a single scrap of evidence to suggest that it is actually the case- return to B above.
Welner is of course correct that there is a correlation and causation problem to consider. As a practical matter, there is nothing else to do but to carefully examine the evidence and history and draw the best conclusions that we can. Dan Lips and I did this in the Education Next article. Florida’s reforms coincided with the student population becoming poorer and less Anglo. State lawmakers increased funding per pupil, but it wasn’t by much and is still below the national average. NEPC complains about a lack of mention of the preschool voucher program when those kids have yet to age into the 4th grade NAEP sample. The class size amendment was implemented very slowly, long after Florida’s scores had begun to rise.
If Dr. Welner would like to provide a plausible explanation for why Florida’s NAEP scores increased so much after 1998, I’d be very interested to read it.
If he prefers to attempt to continue to play games, NEPC’s credibility will go on double secret probation.
“This is the most blatant case of false advertising
since my suit against the movie The Neverending Story.”
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
National standards advocates keep asserting that the standards they’re touting are rigorous and demanding. I’ve noticed that they tend to be strong in assertion but weak in analysis – as though their strategy is to say “These are rigorous standards!” so many times that it becomes true.
In fact, when standards are set across an entire sector they tend to reflect the lowest common denominator. (One word: Betamax.)
Keep that in mind as you read Ze’ev Wurman’s takedown of the science standards recently published by the National Academies. Money quote:
Suddenly it all became clear. This framework does not expect our students to be able to do any science, or to be able to solve any science problem. This framework simply teaches our students science appreciation, rather than science. It expects our students to become good consumers of science and technology, rather than prepare them to be the discoverers of science and creators of technology.
Now I finally understood the wisdom of our government in easing the immigration of skilled professionals even in the midst of the largest unemployment in almost a century. When even our congressionally-chartered National Academies, and their most prestigious National Research Council, have lost their belief that American students can compete with their foreign peers, what else can a lowly government department do?
Do not, I beg you, do not go another day without watching this:
The young man asking the question, and persistently coming back time and again for more punishment, is Michael Moore someone who reminded the original YouTube poster of a young Michael Moore. This is circa 1977-78.
[Update: Below, commenter Alsadius reports this isn't Michael Moore after all. Sure enough, the original YouTube poster has changed the video description to clarify: "I thought the metaphor would be obvious, seeing as how the kid is a skinny redhead, while Michael Moore... well, isn't a skinny redhead. I apologize for the confusion." It was too good to check! I've amended the post title. FWIW, the video's worth your time even if only one of the interlocutors is an intellectual titan of the 20th century.]
Milton does not have the world’s most highly polished interpersonal skills, but he cares deeply about ideas and he desperately, desperately wants this highly motivated young man to broaden his horizons and begin to understand the buried assumptions in his thinking and the real stakes involved in these issues. Too bad he didn’t take the opportunity.
When I wrote my two partcritique of the Gates Foundation strategy, one of our frequent comment-writers, GGW, asked: “What would you do if asked by Gates how to better donate his (and Warren Buffett’s) billions?”
Here is a brief answer to that question: Philanthropists with billions of dollars to devote to education reform should build new institutions and stop trying to fix old ones.
In general, existing institutions don’t want to be fixed. There are reasons why current public schools operate as they do and the people who benefit from that will resist any effort to change it. Those who benefit from status quo arrangements also tend to be better positioned than reformers to repel attempts by outsiders to make significant changes. The history of education reform is littered with failed efforts by philanthropists.
Instead, private donors have had much better success addressing problems by building new institutions. And competition from newly built institutions can have a greater positive impact on existing institutions than trying to reform them directly.
Let’s consider one of the greatest accomplishments in American education philanthropy. In the late 19th century, America’s leading universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) were badly in need of reform. They were still operated primarily as religious seminaries and not as modern, scientific institutions. Rather than trying to reform them directly, major philanthropists built new universities modeled after German scientific institutions. John D. Rockefeller and Marshall Field helped found the University of Chicago. Leland Stanford built Stanford University. A group of private donors built Johns Hopkins. Cornelius Vanderbilt founded Vanderbilt. All of these universities imitated German universities with their emphasis on the scientific method and research and were enormously successful at it. Eventually Harvard, Yale, and Princeton recognized the competitive threat from these German-modeled upstarts and made their own transition from a seminary-focus to a scientific focus.
The reform of the U.S. higher education system did not come from a government mandate or “incentives.” It did not happen by philanthropists giving money directly to the leading universities of the time to convince them to change their ways. It happened by philanthropists building new institutions to compete with the old ones.
The same could be done for K-12 education. Matt Ladner has written a series of posts on “The Way of the Future.” He, along with Terry Moe, Clay Christensen, Paul Peterson, and others, envision large numbers of hybrid virtual schools offering higher quality customized education at dramatically lower costs. Students would attend school buildings, but the bulk of their instruction would be delivered by interactive software. The school would need significantly fewer staff, who would concentrate mostly on assisting students with the technology and managing behavior.
Obviously, this kind of school would not be good for everybody. But it could appeal to large numbers of students and be offered at such a low cost that it could be affordable even to low-income families without needing public subsidy or adoption by the public school system.
Gates or someone else with billions to devote to education could build a national chain of these virtual hybrid schools to compete with existing public and private schools. It’s true that Gates is already investing in the development and refinement of the virtual hybrid school model, but a complete commitment to building new rather than reforming old would give him the potential to do what Rockefeller, Stanford, and others did to higher education. Virtual hybrid schools could be the disruptive technology, as Christensen calls it, to produce real reform in education.
Another benefit of the “building new” strategy for philanthropists is that it avoids the Emperor’s New Clothes problem, where philanthropists are encouraged to pursue flawed strategies to reform existing institutions because everyone is afraid to criticize the wealthy donor from whose largess they benefit. With the “build new” strategy there is ultimately a market test of the wisdom of the strategy. If the new institutions are not better, people won’t choose them. If the University of Chicago had been a flawed model, it wouldn’t have attracted enrollment and would have failed to apply competitive pressure to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Similarly, if the virtual hybrid school is a bad model, then it won’t attract students and compete with existing public and private schools.
Edison Schools is an example of a “build new” strategy that failed the market test. They failed to develop technologies or other efficiencies to bring down the costs of operating private schools. And their revised strategy of operating public schools under contract with public school districts was flawed by an underestimation of the political resistance they would face and their inability to control costs or quality within the public system.
But we also have successful examples of the “build new” strategy adopted by philanthropists. In addition to the string of scientific universities built in the latter half of the 19th century, we also have the example of Andrew Carnegie and public libraries. Carnegie helped promote literacy and cultural knowledge by supporting the construction of hundreds of new libraries around the country. He didn’t try to reform existing book-sellers, he just built new. Another example (outside of education) can be seen in John D. Rockefeller’s role in the development of a national park system. Rockefeller privately acquired large chunks of what are now the Acadia, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone national parks. Rockefeller didn’t try to reform the operations of the existing Interior Department. Instead, he effectively privately built nature reserves and then donated them to the U.S. to become national parks.
Of course, this “build new” strategy has limited potential for smaller-scale philanthropy. But for the very wealthy, like Gates, the path to making a significant and lasting difference is to build new rather than reform old. The lasting benefits of what Rockefeller did in higher education and national parks and Carnegie did with libraries are still noticeable today. If Gates and others with billions to devote to education continue to focus on reforming the old rather than building new, I fear their efforts will soon be forgotten after the Emperor’s New Clothes adulation fades when they stop having large sums to give.
I came across the following correspondence that appears to describe an ingenious plot to plant someone named “Diane” as a double-agent in the teacher union ranks. Once “Diane” gains their trust, her mission is to rile up an Army of Angry Teachers whose slogan-chanting would become so bellicose and unreasonable that it would undermine the popular impression of teachers as a loving extension of the family.
As I’ve argued before, the teacher unions play a double game. They put out a public image of being like the doting aunt or uncle who cares about our kids almost as much as (if not more than) parents do. They know that as long as the public sees the school system as part of the family, they will favor policies that exempt education from the rigors of the marketplace. People see their families as a refuge from the rough and tumble of the marketplace. Families are governed by affection and mutual obligation rather than choice and competition. But in the corridors of power, the teacher unions haggle over pay, benefits, work rules, and autonomy as if they were auto workers, not your favorite aunt or uncle.
The purpose of Diane’s under-cover operation appears to be to undermine that double game and make the self-interested power-grabs by the unions more transparent for what they are. If teacher unions are not viewed as extensions of the family, people would stop exempting education from their normal expectation that there should be choice and competition in the provision of goods and services. If “Diane’s” double-agent sabotage succeeds, the image of teachers buying school supplies out of their own pocket and believing in student potential regardless of difficulties would be replaced with the image of teachers demanding benefits for themselves and blaming circumstances for student low performance.
I’ve inserted videos throughout this post that may provide evidence to substantiate the existence of this conspiracy.
———————————————————————————————
Diane –
We commend you on your willingness to accept this difficult assignment. We know you will have to estrange yourself from former friends and adherents. We know that you will have to ingratiate yourself into a new network whose company may at times be difficult to tolerate — what with their obvious self-interest thinly disguised by shallow slogans, inconsistent arguments, and indifference to empirical evidence. But those qualities are precisely the things that will allow you to gain their trust and rile them into a self-destructive frenzy. Just feed them more shallow slogans, inconsistent arguments, and non-empirically-supported views and they will be like putty in your hands.
There will also be compensating benefits. We know that reformers have stopped paying much attention to you as they shift focus to rigorous quantitative analyses of test results rather than stories spun by polemical historians. But your new teacher union friends will shower plenty of attention on you, as they make no demands for rigor in quantitative or historical analyses and instead judge the merits of arguments based on how they serve their interests. Your new friends will also shower plenty of cash on you as they invite you to speak around the country at about $20,000 a pop. Kozol and Kohn have earned a summer home or two doing this, so don’t let anyone tell you that advocating for public education is not financially rewarding. Of course, if you are successful in this mission, your efforts will undermine the effectiveness of their advocacy by making it seem extreme and self-serving. If you succeed we will reward you even more richly.
Good luck in your efforts!
–The Pentaverate
The Pentaverate –
It has been some time since you sent me on this deep-cover operation, but I am pleased to report that our plan is progressing well. I’ve launched a blog on Education Week as a platform for my sabotage. I’ve written a best-selling book whose arguments are so weak that a grad student could pick them apart in a few blog posts, but which is like catnip to our target audience. I’ve recruited Valerie Strauss, a previously normal and respected journalist, to join our efforts at agitation. And most importantly, I’ve developed a following of 17,307 on Twitter to whom I send about 70 missives a day. I just get the ball rolling and then my followers write the craziest stuff, which I can then just retweet with the plausible deniability that I wasn’t saying it.
For example, I retweeted a message from Gary Stager describing Bill Gates’ view that education can overcome poverty as “Sad, pathetic, ignorant, dangerous, genocidal, wrong.” Genocidal! That’s gold. That weak Jay P. Greene just says that the Gates Foundation has a flawed strategy, but I have folks saying that Gates and anyone who believes that poverty is not immutable is advocating genocide. If stuff like that doesn’t undermine teacher union credibility with sensible people I have no idea what will.
In short, as you have requested I have assembled an Army of Angry Teachers and, like Pogo, they have met the enemy and they are it. Last weekend we marched on Washington for the Save Our Schools (SOS) rally, which should reveal the nuttiness of my Army to policy and opinion leaders nationwide.
–Diane
Diane –
We are very proud of your efforts and admire your heroism is fulfilling the unpleasant task of mobilizing angry teachers into a fevered state. For that work the members of The Pentaverate have decided to award you the Keyser Soze Medal for Excellence in Deception.
We are, however, a bit disappointed with the SOS Rally. You only managed to get 2,000-3,000 people to show up, which makes your army seem like a distinct minority of all teachers (which it probably is). We did, however, like your transparently false description of the rally as the spontaneous outpouring of a grassroots movement, even though it received half its roughly $100k funding from the teacher unions and another quarter from donations by you and Kozol (we will reimburse you for those expenses, just like before).
We liked your speech, particularly the part about how education policy should be made by educators, not by policymakers. Of course by that reasoning energy policy should be made by energy-producers, not policymakers and tax policy should be made by accountants and lawyers. Again, these flimsy and shallow slogans/arguments are doing a great job of undermining the teacher union cause.
We were also pleased with Kozol’s lecture. He’s still rehashing the same stories he acquired from spending a few weeks with poor kids several decades ago, but his slightly slurred and irate delivery gives it just the right touch of insanity. Even Kevin Carey had to comment that Kozol is “edging into deranged preacher territory.” Excellent work!
Still, the small crowd was very discouraging. We know that you couldn’t control the fact that there was a debt crisis going on at the same time, but we are worried about your success at convincing opinion and policy leaders of how representative and unreasonable the Army of Angry Teachers really is.
–The Pentaverate
The Pentaverate –
I appreciate your concerns. It is true that we only managed to get CNN and the HuffPo to cover our rally while the rest of the media ignored us. But we did get Matt Damon to speak at the event. He’s always so eloquent. I’ve attached a video of his speech below.
We will redouble our efforts and I assure you that by the time I am done with this Army of Angry Teachers, they will have thoroughly discredited the teacher unions.
Posted by matthewladner 
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I've amended the post title. FWIW, the video's worth your time even if only one of the interlocutors is an intellectual titan of the 20th century.]
